Football's Holy War?

I have not watched a single World Cup football match this year. Among the slew of trivia surrounding the players that often overtook the games, the best one has been left for the finale.

Will the Pope root for his home country Argentina and would this be in conflict with his predecessor, a German? After all the society type gossip about hairstyles, shoes, girlfriends, and lookalikes, and that goth moment of the Suarez Bite, the finals between the two countries have found a new niche.

Pope Francis has shown that he is quite worldly-wise and not confined to the Vatican. The media is discussing whether he will be pitted against Pope Benedict XVI who is living in retirement now. Both are said to be football fans. According to Christian Today:

Some are cheekily suggesting that it will be a testament to who is the greatest pray-er, and perhaps even who enjoys the highest favour with God.

Sports do have the same appeal, and demand obeisance, as religions. The sounds from the stadium have an effect similar to mass elation or grieving during defining holy festivals or moments. The players have a cult following, and their posture during a winning or losing strike is quite like one of prayer. In fact, it often is a prayer.

The website calls it "the holiest World Cup final yet". One assumes other World Cup finals had their holy moments, or perhaps all such games have divine provenance. Where did Diego Maradona's "hand of god" come from?

Now we have the more urgent: "The question is: who will pray the hardest?" One might have questioned the almost direct intrusion of religion in sport, but the pope vs. pope imagined skirmish sounds like harmless amusement. And it is unlikely that those rooting for either team will do so for their papal affiliations. It's not like we are talking about Mick Jagger!

© Farzana Versey

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The image is obviously a meme.

'Euro-English'

Imagine, how easy it is to get one language to become another. I don't usually post forwards here, but could not resist this...or ziz...from my inbox:

"The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the  British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for  improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become  known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will  replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump  with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should  klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in  the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f"..  This will make words like fotograf 20%  shorter.

In the  3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted  to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are  possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double  letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate  speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the  silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go  away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such  as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz  yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from  vordskontaining "ou"  and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil  sensi bl riten  styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil  find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali  kum tru.

Und  efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze  forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza  pepl."

Not wanted -Muslims in Germany?

Everyone is upset with Germany’s interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, for saying, “Islam in Germany is not something substantiated by history at any point.”

Instead of seeing it as a “slap in the face of Muslims”, as Lamya Kaddor, chairperson of the Liberal-Islamic Union in Germany is seeing it, the more pertinent query is about the minister’s belief that successful integration needs “two things: knowledge of the social reality in Germany and a clear awareness of the western Christian origin of our culture”.

There will be indepth analyses, but one thing is clear: There is a huge identity tussle in Western Europe and if it is getting them in touch with their roots, then Islam should be given credit.

The two points mentioned by the minister have two simple answers:

• The social reality of Germany includes immigrants and not only the four million Muslims. While it is important for them to learn the language, will it integrate them? Unskilled migrants often don’t need to communicate with their distant bosses. There are several examples and we cannot use this to alienate anyone. Our own migrants to the Gulf regions know little or no Arabic and they constitute a huge chunk of the workforce at every level. With so many multinationals in India, we see foreign women and men and they do not speak Hindi, even if they are working for NGOs.

• Regarding the Western Christian origin of German culture, besides the evolution to the idea of the supreme Aryan race to several others, it has not been static. However, I am glad the minister has put it this way. For long the West has been hiding behind the hypocritical curtain of the division of state and religion. It used the negative images of Islam as an example of how rotten it is to have these two aspects together. The fact is that western nations have always had the Christian subtext.

At last someone has voiced it clearly. Now we can look at these nations in the same manner in which they look at others.